***
Dinner was fantastic, and probably one of the most fun attempts at cooking that she’d yet tried. She hated cooking and had ever since she’d been forced to take Home-Ec classes in high school. She’d wanted to take woodshop, but her mom hadn’t allowed it.
“Households these days need someone who knows how to sew buttons, mend clothes, pay bills, and put good food on the table once hard-working husbands come home. You need to know how to do all that far more than you need to know how to make a clock.”
Stace ended her high school years with the distinction of being the only person in the history of Home-Ec to set fruit salad on fire. As far as she knew, she still held that dubious honor to this day.
In the kitchen with Brock, however, it was a completely different experience. He not only showed her how to hold things while she chopped them, but he showed her how to chill onions first before dicing so they wouldn’t make her cry. He showed her the flavorful distinction between using dried and fresh herbs, and most importantly, he showed her how twitchy her own tummy was every time his arm brushed against hers while they worked together to make Hamburger Helper Without the Box. He made it like lasagna, but with elbow mac noodles instead of the flat kind. She got to help while he layered noodles and meat, cheese and fresh-made tomato sauce into a casserole dish. While her pie cooled on a hot plate on the kitchen counter and the casserole cooked in the oven, they did dishes together, cleaning up the kitchen while they laughed and talked and laughed some more.
He said something funny, and she flicked him with soap suds from the sink. When he plucked a wooden spoon out of the utensil crock beside the stove, she laughingly told him she didn’t fear the puny strength of his arm. She was a big girl now, she boasted, her nerves fluttering and her face burning. That meant she was too grown for spankings. When he laughed, it took all she had to ignore the wildly flocking butterflies that made her insides churn as she pretended to know he wouldn’t really swat her, not like he was threatening to.
But oh, how she liked it when he threatened her. Her bottom was crawling, the entire surface anticipating the first of many stinging smacks, and yet she felt so safe with him. Her nipples were tingling too, and the ever present flush when he came sauntering towards her, to pin her against the sink with his broad hands braced on the counter, the wooden spoon gripped in one, and that challenging smile splitting his beard and mustache in that sexy way that sank heat all through her until the throb of it came pulsing to life between her tensing thighs.
Pops came wandering into the kitchen, bouncing Lily against his shoulder while she stole the hat from his head and put it on hers instead. “Little monkey,” he told her, and she grinned, showing off her baby teeth. “When are we having the pie?”
“Just as soon as we come back from the store with ice cream.” Brock pushed off the counter, moving a respectful distance away, as if he’d never held her pinned at all.
Her body knew differently. His nearness had left her trembling, and fluttering, and happier than she could remembering being in a very, very long time. Not since those early years with her husband, when he went out of his way all the time—bringing her flowers, fixing her car, running errands and such and so on. The little things that good husbands did for their wives; the silent ‘I love you’s that were said through his actions and which she had told herself over and over again were more important than words. Words were only that. Actions were the things that actually meant something.
Actions like the way Brock pinned her to the counter, with her back against the sink and her hands soaked in dishwater suds, and his hips and tummy so close to her that if she only pushed off the counter, they’d be in full body contact. Almost. It was the kind of almost that barely mattered. They were parted by only the most minimal distance, a finger’s width, if that. If she could have moved in any way he might interpret as accidental, she’d have done it, just to feel the tension in her nipples as they brushed his chest. Or the hardness of his stomach pressing into hers. Or... was he hard? Did he have all the same fluttery feelings inside of him that were turning her insides all melty?
She squirmed, knowing no matter how she ached to feel him all the way against her, chest to stomach to hips... to groin...she couldn’t do anything with Pops standing in the doorway and she definitely couldn’t now that Brock had stepped back.
“What kind of ice cream do we want?” Brock asked, his tone cheerful enough although he wasn’t looking at her anymore.
“Let’s go get our coats on,” Pops playfully told the baby. “We’ll all go. And look at the lights, yes, we will, won’t we?”
Lily squealed, so he must have walked off making funny faces at her.
Once again, they were left alone, but it was different now. Brock had backed all the way up against the wall opposite of her. His hands were behind his back. His gaze was on her, that hungry look subdued, but not gone. He said nothing, just studied her, a slight pulse ticcing in and out as he clenched his jaw in thought.
The silence stretching out between them quickly lost all eroticism. She was growing nervous now, the longer it went.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted, forcing a tiny laugh that was at complete odds with the tension pulling her into knots again. “I didn’t mean to make things awkward.”
He cocked his head. “And how did you do that? Make things awkward I mean?”
He would ask that. She had no idea, but everything felt so different right now and she had no idea how it had become like that. She just knew he was way over there and she was still at the sink, and he wasn’t smiling like he had been before. She touched her chest, rubbing between her breasts to ease the knot squeezing in around her heart.
Laughing didn’t help diminish it. The awkwardness was growing and she was flustered because of it. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I just didn’t mean to... I mean, if you felt like you had to...” Had to what? Kiss her? Press in close the way he’d done. The way she still ached for him to come back and do again, sending her whole body soaring with butterflies.
“A minute more,” Brock told her somberly, “I’d have been kissing you when dad came in.”
Her breath choked off mid inhale.
“I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to,” she said, coming to the only conclusion she could make for why he was still standing as far from her as he could and still be in the kitchen.
“Made me,” he echoed, shaking his head and aiming his laugh toward the floor.
“It’s—” She pressed a hand over her stomach, trying to still the tornado of doubt churning so hard in her that she all but felt sick from it. “It’s been a very long time since I was intimate with a man, and if I’ve made you feel uncomfortable, then I’m... um... I’m... very sorry.”
She cut off with a startled squeak when suddenly Brock shoved off the far wall and came at her. He still had the spatula in his hand and for the span of the two startled heartbeats that it took him to reach her, she thought he might be about to use it. She didn’t know why any more than she knew why the whole room had gone from delightfully intimate to suddenly awkward. But her heart leapt into her throat and she had no way to know if it was from excitement or the nervous fear that had her gasping when he suddenly dropped the wooden spatula in the water-filled sink and grabbed her by the hips instead.
There was an intensity to his face that set her on fire when he pulled her to him, bringing their bodies into that same full contact that she had just been lusting for. Her breath caught all over again when the bulge of his very hard cock came solidly up against her lower belly. He crushed her breasts in the hunger of his embrace, and before she knew he was going to do it, he kissed her.
It wasn’t gentle. It was consuming, the caress of his soft lips turning hard and hungry as he gave in to kiss after lip-conquering kiss. He lit her up inside; when he cupped her face in both his hands, his thumbs caressing her cheeks as he teased her into opening her mouth, and in he went. She’d never kissed in away that felt so much like making love before. She’d never kissed in a way that sent her head spinning and her emotions soaring.
Her heart was racing, every point of contact between them sparking like fireworks, like the bright, multicolored pinpoints of light twinkling on an otherwise dark Christmas tree.
